If there is no Xdebug section, simply create it. It does not matter where (at the bottom, at the beginning, somewhere inbetween). Its not a mistake, its simply useless to create an empty section, maybe once there has been an Xdebug section in Xampp (i dont know).

Thank you for your reply, but if you really believe it's not a mistake to say "Within this file, find the [Xdebug] section" and no such section exists, we have a different definition of what constitutes a mistake. It may not be serious, but I call it a mistake.

I required a long time of tedious research to get Xdebug to work on my XAMPP v7.2.3 installation. Thought I'd try my hand with more detailed instructions to help others.

Step 1. Go to https://xdebug.org/download.php to download your required binaries for Xdebug, or even better wait until Step 3 below.

Step 2. To make life easier, go to https://xdebug.org/wizard.php and follow their simple instructions. For me I rendered http://localhost/dashboard/phpinfo.php, then copied all the text from the webpage (not from View Source). Paste into their wizard and press 'Analyse my phpinfo() output' button.

Step 3. The wizard identifies your platform and renders your Tailored Installation Instructions with a specific link for the Xdebug binaries download for your system. These were my 4 steps:

1. Download php_xdebug-2.6.0-7.2-vc15.dll

2. Move the downloaded file to C:\xampp\php\ext

3. Edit C:\xampp\php\php.ini and add the line zend_extension = C:\xampp\php\ext\php_xdebug-2.6.0-7.2-vc15.dll

4. Restart the webserver

Step 4. From the newly updated phpinfo() output, you will then see all the various default Xdebug Directives. At this point you can edit your php.ini file with addition Off/On switching for those Directives. For example, "xdebug.collect_vars = Off" is the default setting. My code block shows how to turn it on.